a
certain reputation for nobility of character. In company with the senate
he inspected the Pretorians while they were busy with exercises and
distributed to them the two hundred and fifty denarii apiece that had
been bequeathed, and he added as a gift as many more. To the people he
paid the one thousand one hundred and twenty-five myriads (this was the
amount bequeathed to them) and in addition the sixty denarii per man
which they had failed to receive on the occasion of his enrollment among
the iuvenes,--this with interest amounting to fifteen denarii more. He
also settled the bequests to the citizen force, to the night-watchmen, to
those of the regular army outside Italy, and to any other army of native
Romans in the smaller forts,--that is, the citizens proper received one
hundred twenty-five denarii each, and all the rest seventy-five.

He behaved in this same way also in regard to Livia's will, executing all
the provisions of it. If he had spent the rest of his money with equal
propriety, he would nave been thought prudent and munificent. Sometimes,
through fear of the people and the soldiers, he did so act, but it
was mostly through whims. At such times he discharged not only the
obligations of Tiberius but those of his great-grandmother, and debts
owing to private individuals as well as to others. As it was, he lavished
boundless sums upon dancers (whose recall he at once effected), upon
horses, upon gladiators and everything of that sort; and so in an
inconceivably short time he had exhausted the treasures, which had grown
so great, and at the same time convicted himself of having done it
through a sort of easy-going temper and indecision. He had found
accumulated five myriad myriads, seven thousand five hundred denarii, or
(according to others) eight myriad myriads, two thousand five hundred,
and yet could not keep any part of it to the third year, but actually in
the second season fell in need of a great deal besides.

[-3-] He went through the same process of deterioration, too, in almost
all other respects. At first he seemed a most democratic person and would
send no letters either to the people or to the senate nor assume any of
the titles of sovereignty; yet he became most dictatorial, so that he
took in one day all those honors which Augustus had with difficulty
secured, voted one by one, during the long extent of his reign, some of
which Tiberius had refused to accept at all. He postponed nothing exce